Bristol Palin is writing a memoir -- or is she?

Bristol Palin, the 20-year-old daughter of the former Alaska governor and current Fox News commentator Sarah Palin is writing a memoir for publication later this year. The younger Palin is best known for her appearances on "Dancing With the Stars" and for having a child at age 18 with on-again, off-again beau Levi Johnston. 

Well, she was writing the book -- as of Monday, at least. Entertainment Weekly and the Hollywood Reporter linked to the Amazon.com page for the upcoming book. EW.com writer Keith Staskiewicz added, with no small amount of frustration, "I guess the fact that Bristol Palin is apparently set to write a memoir of her own shouldn’t necessarily make my brain implode in on itself like the house at the end of 'Poltergeist.' "

Since then, Amazon has removed the page from its website. The Associated Press reports that "publicist Seale Ballenger of the Harper imprint William Morrow, the book's presumed publisher, declined to comment Tuesday."

Instead of working on her book, apparently, Bristol Palin was talking to E! News, whom she told she would "probably" run for office someday. CBS News reports that in the interview, scheduled to air in two parts on Tuesday and Thursday, Bristol Palin says, "If I saw something that needed to be changed, then I would step up to the plate and do something about it."

Does she talk about her upcoming book? CBS News reports that she says she will "hopefully" write a book someday. Whether it's Palin herself or her publishers who are doing the hoping is not clear.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Bristol Palin, center, at a filming of Extra at the Grove in Los Angeles, October 2010. Credit: Michael Caulfield / Getty Images for Extra

'Tiger Mother' hits Chinese bookshelves

Author Amy Chua's controversial ode to parenting, detailed in her bestselling book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," was predicated on her being a "Chinese mother."

So now that her book has arrived in China, is she just called a "mother"?

Not quite. The Yale law professor's memoir about rearing her two daughters by strictly denying them everything from sleepovers to computer games is being marketed in China as something more foreign than familiar.

The book's title has been translated into Chinese as "Being a Mom in America." The book's publisher, CITIC Publishing House, describes Chua, the daughter of Filipino-Chinese parents, as "overseas Chinese."

"When copyright agencies approached us last summer, we foresaw her book would be controversial," Wang Feifei, acquisition editor at CITIC Publishing House, told the Xinhua News Agency. "We don't take it as a traditional parenting book, largely because it involves intense cross-cultural collision and conflict."

The book has been available online since mid-January and ranked No. 80 in sales as of Thursday on Joyo.com, a Chinese version of Amazon. It is to receive wider distribution at bookstores after the Feb. 3 Chinese New Year holiday.

Despite the publisher's spin, it's unclear if Chinese parents will be drawn into reading about Chua's perceived advocacy of regimental learning –- be it hours of piano playing or hundreds of math problems at the expense of fun and games.

The news that Chinese mothers and fathers impart strength over affection is nothing new.

But the book actually arrives at a time when the Chinese are doing some soul-searching about the merits of rote learning.

"The making of superb test-takers comes at a high cost, often killing much of, if not all, the joy of childhood," wrote Chen Weihua, an editor at the state-run China Daily, around the time students in Shanghai had made headlines by besting the rest of the world in standardized math, science and reading exams.

Xiong Bingqi, an education expert at Shanghai's Jiao Tong University, told The Times' Megan Stack earlier this month that Chinese students lacked imagination and creativity.

"In the long run, for us to become a strong country, we need talent and great creativity," Xiong said. "And right now, our educational system cannot accomplish this."

-- David Pierson in Beijing

Photo: The cover of Amy Chua’s book in China. Credit: CITIC Publishing House

On sale today: The Chinese mother's battle cry

Parents intrigued by the essay "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" that appeared in Saturday's Wall Street Journal can now go straight to the source.

Writer Amy Chua's "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," which the Journal excerpted, officially goes on sale in bookstores today. It's a memoir of what the publisher describes as "extreme parenting," the kind that results in high-achieving kids.

What's extreme? Well, many of the simple pleasures of childhood are not allowed by a Chinese mother: sleepovers, playdates, school drama productions, TV, computer games, A-minuses or below. Chua writes:

I'm using the term "Chinese mother" loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish and Ghanaian parents who qualify too. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.

All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.

This is the third -- and perhaps most controversial -- book for Chua, a professor at Yale Law School. "I can't wait to see the mommy backlash on this one," Susan Salter-Reynolds wrote in our pages Sunday.

Chua and her Jewish American husband have two daughters, who are being raised according to all the Chinese mother principles in Chua's book.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

The hidden history of baby books

The baby book is a humble domestic item, with places to fill in immunization records and growth progress. But UCLA’s Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library has collected more than 1,100 of them in what may be the nation's only university library baby book collection.

“The Mother’s Record of the Physical, Mental, and Moral Growth of Her Child for the First Fifteen Years,” published in 1882, is the oldest book in the collection. The book was a giveaway by Mellin's Baby Food -- which in the early 1900s featured baby Humphrey Bogart in their advertising -- and appears to be early in the genre, because it includes prompts for how to fill in the blanks.

“We started thinking about how these books were used to keep track of things like height, weight, language, illnesses and immunizations — and wondering what was the interest in parents in keeping all these measurements on their children," Russell Johnson, librarian for history and special collections for the sciences, told UCLA Today. The collection was launched by donor Barbara Rootenberg, an alum and antiquarian bookseller focused on the history of medicine.

Baby books are the kind of ephemera that don't have a place. Technically books, they're not exactly plot-driven, thrill-a-minute reads. Although they contain useful information, once the baby has grown into a healthy child, the book isn't needed -- many in the collection are only partially completed. And few people have room on their shelves for baby books of now-deceased relatives.

The collection, does, though, if you've got some you want to de-acquisition.

UCLA's collection helps show how families thought about the health of their children -- which measurements were thought to be important, which diseases were concerns, the perception of breast feeding and how these things changed over time. The books also reveal what kinds of health information filtered from official sources into the everyday lives of families.

But as much as the collection is about medicine, it is also about culture. Baby books that include photographs may reveal under-chronicled aspects of home life, such as baby furniture and casual dress. A New Jersey historian used the collection for a book she's writing about consumer culture and babies. Many baby books were giveaways from companies that sold baby-related products, from Mellin baby food to bank accounts.

A few, however, were intended to be keepsakes passed on to generations. "Most persons regret that the little items of babyhood, so interesting, to the parents at least, pass into oblivion," reads the introduction to 1889's "Baby's Record: a Twofold Gift for Mothers and Children." "The book is not intended to be a family record, but an individual one, which will form a part of the outfit of each newcomer in the household, and which can afterward be given to the child, to be preserved as a source of interest and entertainment for himself and his own children in after years." Or, better yet, librarians.

-- Carolyn Kellogg
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Photo: Pages from a vintage 1930s baby book. Credit: playingwithbrushes via Flickr